There is not much on which most of the nations of the world agree. There is one on which there is not much room for disagreement: China lies. It lies to its own people and it lies to the world. There is nothing new about this trait; it is justified by a traditional Chinese social trait. China’s social minders have, throughout its two millennia history, preferred group harmony and relational-face-saving over literal truth-telling; Xi Jinping is carrying on the tradition. The first century Book of Han says, “Harmony brings good fortune, while discord leads to misfortune.” Xi Jinping quoted this in 2017 at a function celebrating the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland. Two years later, Xi discarded the promise of “one country, two systems,” propounded laws to take Hong Kongers to China for trial and then brought the draconian Hong Kong National Security Law 2020 that virtually made all Hong Kongers subject to the repressive state apparatus of the communist state.

Much before China became rich and powerful, it was telling lies. 24 years ago, on 14 March 2002, The Economist carried a story on China, “How cooked are the books?” Among the difficulties in assessing the actual GDP of China, it listed, “the widespread tendency among officials to lie in order to boost their political fortunes.” It mentioned the mismatch in provincial figures that would produce a GDP growth two points higher than the one declared for the previous year in February 2002 by the national government. Some Western analysts, including Thomas Rawski of the Pittsburgh University believed that the 2001 growth rate was about half of the official figure. He found that in the three years between 1997 and 2000, officially, GDP grew by 24.7% but energy consumption dropped by 12.8% in the same period; no amount of increase in energy efficiency in three years can harmonise these figures. Despite falling air ticket prices, passenger miles grew by only 2.2% during 1997-1998 while officially, the economy grew by 8.8% and 7.8% respectively in these years.

15 years later, The Economist was back on the theme with a story on 26 January, 2017, “A big Chinese province admits faking its economic data.” The government admitted that Liaoning province had faked the data from 2011 to 2014, inflating revenues by about 20%. The subtitle of the article showed diverse opinions about this admission, “Typical! Say cynics. Cleaning up at last! Say optimists.” Li Keqiang was Prime Minister in 2017 but was Communist Party Chief of Liaoning province when the figures were faked. He had told the US ambassador to China that the GDP figures were “man-made.” His administration had faked investment figures also; when some clean-up was done, the fixed-asset investment fell by 63%.

No Chinese would undertake an objective analysis of the official figures for fear of the consequences; none, except one. Chinese state media reported on 7 July, 2026 that one of China’s best-known macroeconomists, Gao Shanwen, had died of cancer at the age of 55. In 2024, he had said that China GDP growth may have been overstated by 10 percentage points during 2021 to 2023 and that this had annoyed the Party. He was the chief economist at Essence Securities which was later named SDIC securities. Gao’s security industry registration was cancelled a few months before his death; dissidents’ death in places like China and Russia always have a lot more to them than what the official announcement states.

On the external front, Tibet fared worse than Hong Kong. After occupying Tibet, China signed in May 1951 a Seventeen-Point Agreement, which guaranteed regional self-rule to Tibetans. China followed this Agreement more in breach, leading to the 1959 Lhasa uprising and the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet for a life of exile in India. A cultural genocide followed in which the language, script and culture of Tibetans is being systematically erased and even their ethnicity is endangered by the systematic incentivisation of mixed marriages. In two decades, the only Tibetans will be the refugees outside Tibet.

The list of instances when China is known to have spoken to the world untruthfully is long and tiring. It promised India to follow the Buddha’s pañcasīla, the Five Precepts; one of those is Satya, being truthful. Two others are Asteya, no stealing and Ahimsa, no violence. Shortly after that, in 1962, it attacked India on several fronts and occupied 38,000 square kms of Indian territory while claiming the whole of Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The miserable failure of the Indian government of the day to protect our country does not absolve China of reneging on its solemn promises.

China has stolen most of the patents of the West. It culminated in the incident nine months ago in which China tried to pry open a DUV lithography machine made by Netherland’s ASML, which is the only manufacturer in the world of these high-end chip etching machines. The clumsy effort ended with a broken machine and then the Chinese were brazen enough to ask ASML to repair it. The company refused, telling them that the attempt at opening the machine had voided the warranty.

The Japanese have finally seen the truth that setting up a factory in China invariably means surrendering their intellectual property rights. They are refraining from any new investment in China and have closed several existing factories. Japanese workers were seen destroying machines with sledge hammers and welding torches while the Chinese implored them to sell these machines. The Japanese ignored the offers and at the end of the day, just a huge pile of scrap was left. In a video titled “China’s Tech Theft Fails: Japan Destroys Million-Dollar Machine Tools Rather Than Sell To China”, a Chinese dealer for old machines laments the action of the Japanese, saying he had already invited a group of people to ‘repair’ the machines.

During Covid, the Chinese state kept lying about its origins, even blaming the US military for spreading the virus. While hiding the figures about infections and deaths in China, it mocked other countries who had been truthfully releasing the figures. The disinformation was widespread, with a large number of fake social media accounts created for this purpose. An article published on 10 September, 2020 by the ‘Council For Foreign Relations’ (CFR) described these efforts in detail. One Chinese report said that Europe had left sick people to die in the streets. Another said that Trump wanted to lock down the entire US. The truth was just the opposite; the title of a BBC report of 29 October, 2020 tells it all, “Trump slams lockdowns, Biden accuses him of insulting victims.” In September 2015, Xi Jinping had unambiguously said that China will not militarise the artificial islands it was creating in the South China Sea. Thereafter, China went on to construct military facilities and heavily armed these man-made islands.

While China’s human rights record is bad enough, its Foreign Ministry spokesperson posted a computer-generated image on Twitter showing an Australian soldier killing an Afghan child to discredit democracies. When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an apology from Beijing, China not only refused but the creator of the image, a person named Fu Yu, described his work as an “effort to protect mankind” and threatened to make more such images.

The 5th century BC founder of Taoism, Lao-Tzu, says in Tao Te Ching, which is considered the cornerstone of Taoism, “When honesty fails, dishonesty prevails.” It appears falsehood and cheating are so deeply embedded in China that Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign may have to go on forever, even outliving him. / DAILY WORLD /

(R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)